The Writing Prompt Boot Camp

November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 8

Good morning! I’ve been hanging out with my stepson all morning (he just turned five yesterday!), and he’s being kind enough to let me throw up a prompt real quick while he sings the Transformers theme song (guess what he got for his birthday last night?). Soooooo, I’m going to make this one pretty quick and easy.

Know how we had a prompt yesterday for a myth poem? Today, I’d like you to write a fact poem. Research a fact (or facts) about your theme and create a poem. Or make up a fact. Or spin a myth into a fact. Or, well, you get the idea.

Here’s my attempt for the day:

“Werewolves”

–“London calling to the zombies of death…” -The Clash

We do exist,though only from full moon to full moon,our howls shaking the nightinto fantastic madness.

We do exist,though we spread from village to village,only to be killed by villagersand swept under a rug of superstition.

We do exist,though we spread from person to person,our howls haunting the nightas people hide in fear.

before you spray noxious mist upon
my golden head consider the
pearl-bordered fritillary
ponder honeybees early in the season
think of my gift of delight to children
as small puffs of breath send white
umbrellas afloat in the breeze

I’m not a pesky weed to be
wiped out but a vital source
of nectar and pollen
brew a steamy pot of tea
make dandelion wine
add tasty nutrition to your salad
draw on my roots for herbal remedies

Still, if you must destroy me
I plead for hand-weeding,
never mind rumors about my
deep twisted brittle taproots
regenerating if you don’t get
every piece and don’t listen when
told the more you dig and break
off pieces of root, the more
likely I’ll come back another day
relinquish the toxic fumes
that are poison to you too
grab that hoe and dig me up

“Brain cells are extremely sensitive to oxygen deprivation and can begin to die within five minutes after oxygen supply has been cut off.”

As if a coveted arcade prize
Clinging for dear life
To the mechanical arm manipulating it,
The question fell from my lips:
“Will there be residual damage?”
Like my high-school SAT scores,
Shrouded beneath a security flap,
I both wanted—needed—
And dreaded the answer at once.
Even after intubation,
Oxygen saturation reached only 70%.
How many minutes did
His brain cells gasp for breath?
More than five?
Professionally speaking,
“There could be. We can only
Wait and see.”

A dog’s sense of smell is 100 thousand times
keener than his handler’s. Bodies alive and dead
constantly give off scent. Scenting conditions
are better at night. The handler’s job
is to calculate terrain and microclimate
to use his dog to best advantage.
He needs to know where he is on the map
while fighting his way through under-
brush at midnight in the rain.
The dog sees better in the dark
and has his own search strategies.
His greatest joy is finding somebody
alive. At every step the handler worries
about what he’s missing. In this team
the handler is the weakest link.

An outgoing president
in a meeting to save the world
Why does he not go up
and as one last act
of his miserable, failed term
do something grand
and support the nations?
He could shine
could go out with a bang
and be remembered
as something other than
what the cat dragged in

It was like their bodies were talking to each other, they came together as one.
Two naked bodies tangled together each speaking to the other.
They knew just how to touch each other, every movement made more pleasure.
Their touches made their bodies ache for more. Two bodies coming together as one.
She sank into the warmth of his chest, feeling as if her body entered his.
His kiss’s were so gentle and tender almost feeling of love.
Two bodies lost, lost in the pleasure of love.

In my earliest fantasies you were still almost a child, young, unmarried and pregnant, poor and urban, living on the streets of NYC. The letter in my hand says you were a waitress living in the rural south, thirty-five, divorced, already
a mother with two children, the boy ten and the girl twelve, that you had kept.

I imagined my father a poet and a musician; writing you love lyrics in a tree in Central Park, singing them to you while you slept. In the letter I read he was 31, in the air force, an Irishman with wavy hair, married. You knew him from child hood. He knew you were pregnant. He didn’t come north with you to the big city.

I knew I was part Indian, probably a tribe in New York, maybe Mohawk, or Seneca, though I always hoped I was Onondaga. I loved the way the name
rolled off my tongue. Yet you were from the south, Eastern Band Cherokee
and Amish, a dark-skinned woman pregnant with a mixed blood baby, me.

I looked for you but the hospital was gone, records sealed, state laws protecting your anonymity, whatever trail there was gone cold. I wished I would find you like my best friend’s daughter found her. I dreamed you would search for me. The truth is the space between remains the same, as deep and wide as when you first left.

Your body grooving against mine—this is how
We met on a dance floor, dank with sweat and need.
Your palm pressing into the small of my spine
Where wet meets sweat, unsure if it is yours or mine
And either is fine with me caught as I am in the net
Of your heavy blue eyes and the movement of we.

but in the cave
of my subconscious
the beast has my face,
knocks me with ease to my knees
the rocks and rubble of the ground
scrape and I crawl my way
to the light
unable to stand or walk
even when I reach
the blue sky in your eyes

Swinging and swaying to the music in my head
Your arm alone holds me down, keeps me from flying
Along with the bed. You say I whimper in my sleep.
I say keep me safe until I wake up from this dream.

I read that 25% of women are physically assaulted of raped by
dates, boyfriends, spouses, or ex spouses every year
and every 21 days a woman is killed
by domestic violence–
er, excuse me “intimate violence”

Yes, we are a very intimate couple
We are so close it could someday
kill me

The earth is 70% water and should be enough to last indefinitely til infinity
Somehow we have polluted, wasted, and taken it for granted
Many in the world die for lack of this prevalent liquid
At the rate we are dumping wastes and poisions into ground water
We may be the next country crying for just one drop of potable liquid
Do we think we are so sovereign that we can create new water
or do we just not care about tomorrow

without kids
we roamed
the children’s
museum
like the bell
for recess
had just sounded
and we were
finally free
but in the fake
cave in
the science
wing we are
alone and full
on biology
and i wanted
you to bend
me over
somewhere
beside stalagmites
while we
breathlessly
recited
the periodic
table of elements

Once a thriving community, now just a shadow of it’s former self
Oregon sports more ghost towns than any other state in the union.
An estimated 50,000+ cattle towns, mining camps, fishing villages,
lumber towns, and historic forts scatter helter skelter across America.
End of the trail for many a pioneer, thousands of emigrants headed west
Circa 1800’s in pursuit of the American dream: land, freedom, a fresh start.
Abundant rainfall grew Paul Bunyan sized trees, and lumberjacks with
size 12 boots to fill ‘em. Didn’t take long for a logging industry to
clog up river and roadways, and make a name for itself internationally.
Farming communities and fishing villages multiplied along rivers and
Coastlines, while gold mining camps further threw their hats into the ring.
Military posts developed to protect the mouth of the Columbia River,
Railroads came and went along with their construction camps and stations,
with whistle stops becoming scrapbook memorabilia as modern diesel
locomotives supplanted old steamers. Winding stagecoach ruts were
replaced by freeways, and little Mom & Pop dives gave way to Strip Malls
and big chains, leaving behind rubble and old cemeteries like bottle deposits.

I don’t know how
when tragedy strikes
our world stops. Its
unfathomable that
others go on with
daily life things.

Life goes on
with or without us
there’s never a hault ,
a pause so we can catch our
breathe or refigure things
so they make sense again.

The most we hope for
those of us who greive
who have an added trauma
of loss of child, loss to
suicide or murder, unexpected
loss,is that we will hop back
on the spinning sphere of
life when we are able.

The world goes round
but there are hands
reaching out to help
us back on board. The
world doesn’t stop revolving
but we can get back on
with help, our friends, our
families, professionals,
all the hands reaching
out when we can see them
again. Grab on when you can.

My father laid me in the snow,
ran again into the burning theatre
to grab Carroll balanced on the second
floor window ledge in his Roy Rogers
pajamas, smoke’s heavy hand
on his back. In photographs
my brother posed like John Atlas,
or wore a cape and drew a six gun.
He was crazy enough to jump.
Sometimes I think I feel the cold
on my back, lying in that drift,
helpless, while Carroll imagined
landing on his feet unscathed.

The long drive north to the big city
Stretches out before us, the road
A black ribbon, dark and gritty
In the rising sun, our progress slowed
Only by the lumbering eighteen-wheeled
Monsters climbing the hills. We swoop down the other side,
Conversation for the moment congealed
By the spectacular view through which we ride.
The early morning promises another day
Of Indian Summer, golden sun, blue skies,
Even enough breeze to blow away
The scum above the town that dyes
The air with brown. The journey is long
And tiring, even with friends, for without you, I don’t belong.

It is a fact that past leads to present
and present leads to future, also
a fact that all we have is the present.
We can never experience again what we
experienced yesterday nor can we know
what will happen tomorrow. We have
only one moment, this moment
to live. If we ignore or waste this moment
it is lost forever, never to be reclaimed.

Scientific American did a whole issue
Devoted to the brain and not just the physiology
Of the thing, but including the elusive nature of that
Which is thought of as the mind, and where it’s housed

The seat of the soul or spirit, some say; S.A. showed
Many photos of MRI’s of so-called normal brains
Beside MRI’s of the brains of clinical depressives
Highlighting the areas in the brains of the latter that
According to the various hues, the experts agreed,
proved conclusively
The malfunctioning of those particular organs’ chemicals

It was a monumental breath-through
After years of not being able to prove the diagnoses
Of depression or mania or, sometimes even schizophrenia
Now – the researchers said – they would be able to point out
The problem right on the screen of their fancy new machine

Dancing in the streets, there should have been dancing
But the mentally ill are a cautious lot, reticent by nature
Used to being built up and let down all too often
So many, held their collect breath, and council too
Waiting, as it were, for the other shoe to drop

And sure enough, some months later, the MRI findings
While not entirely debunked, were exposed as not as encouraging
As first thought, the manipulations possible and indeed
Used with each patient, left the data less than reliable
and even though there was some cause for hope
And things were somewhat better than before
It did seem as if the problem was still, all in the head.

Fear, framed in effigy, for all to see:
Four consensus facts about fear
and my fifth, conclusive, in which
I have figured a method to fight
that which frightens us.

i
Fear lives in the future.
That is, it exists on anticipation,
an affect of consideration, of the after.
What happened before is finished.
The present, in and of itself,
cannot be feared, because of
the constant state of flux,
perpetually morphing into the past.
Real fear is knowledge of the
unknown, only what follows
from here until forever.
And the farther in time from
the object floating in your mind’s eye,
the further you sink into a
feeble ball on the floor.

ii
Fear is foreshadowed by desire.
This is the ‘what if?’ of life;
the fundamental conflict between
what we fancy and what life affords us.
We often allow fantasy, rather than
reality, to influence our foolish notions
of need, and suffer the difference.
This may sound familiar, it is.
This is a fragment of the above.
The struggle to resist the flow
in favor of something more beautiful,
goes against the forces of nature,
but falls in line with human behavior.
Anticipating the refusal of nature,
we fear the interference with our desires.

iii
Fear is just a feeling.
And phobia is an ‘overblown
emotion,’ a catastrophic failure
of defenses set in place for the
safety of your psyche.
This phenomenon of mentally
fabricating false effects, or intensifying
the otherwise common feelings to a
stimulus, is, unfortunately, hard to fix.
Pharmaceutical intervention has
been found to provide relief of symptoms,
even a significant reduction of dreadful
thoughts, but ignores the foundation
of the feelings, forcing the patient
to cope with slightly deflated fears.

iv
Fear is always about loss.
The belief that a function of your
actions will lead to the forfeit
of something [in the future].
This is why the feathered Indian
fleas from the photographer.
Also, this is where failure, everyone’s
favorite fear, comes out to play.
You know, the fleeting sense of
defeat, the idea that your efforts are
futile, insufficient or ineffective.
But I find some fault in this theory.
What of the fear that you will inflict
harm on [a female, for me] you care for?
I would rather forgo her company,
than risk tears on her face.
I guess no theory is perfect.

v
Fear is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
People are afraid of the physical,
mental and metaphysical
manifestations of their fears.
Fear is infectious, retrofitting itself
in an infinite cycle until the first
instance is identified and eliminated.
You want freedom from fear?
Confront that which you are afraid of,
defy the feeling, so that it cannot
suffocate you, and see to fruition.
Once you become informed on the
future of your fear-ridden anticipations,
and see the falsities of your anxiety-driven
expectations, the epiphany should allow
you to move forward with your life.

*This information brought to you by the
letter F, with a special appearance by P & H.
Recommended by four out of five physicians.
Funding and support provided by Kashi brand
blueberry waffles, fermented hops (Shiner),
and the fear of feigning a poet and exposed
as a fraud.

Slinging around it’s trajectory
attracted to the positive despite
its negativity, I introduce the electron.

Content in the knowledge that
a neutral observer can measure
either it’s velocity or it’s position

with some scientific certainty,
never both. As it zooms around
it’s nucleus at unclocked speeds,

it must wriggle with joy to know
how little it gives away to the
scientists attempting to pin it down.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (as paraprased by and English Lit major now!) One can detrmine either the momentum or the position of a partical in a system, but not both. Not because of the limitations of the abitily to measure it, but because of the nature of the system itself. I think I have the jist of it.

When the rumor circulated around my college,
I put a Beatles album on my record player,
not so much to buy into the myth,
but to satisfy my own curiosity.

I dropped the needle between the tracks
and nudged the turntable backward.
The sound rumbled up from low bass
to a strange distorted woosh,
like a voice being pulled through a sleeve.

But it was gibberish, some alien language,
nothing about the secret death of a Beatle,
no hidden morbid messages. Someone
with an active imagination might have put
a few inverted syllables together
and interpreted them as “Paul is dead”.
I didn’t buy this false gospel, at least not this time.

But we tend to hear what we want to hear,
or what others want us to hear.
Suggestion is a powerful language –
it wells up inside and latches onto
whatever the outside world holds out to us
saying, yes, I want to be a part of all this,
I speak this too.

He was tangled in the weeds
Upside down
Irony of ironies
A goose drowned
In the element he loved best
Diving and splashing
He’d disappear from sight
And then pop up in another place
I never knew geese could do that
I never knew they could drown either
And I never knew the depth of grief
That their mate carries for so long
Twenty-four seven, for days and weeks
She cried; calling, calling
Incessantly honking, for
The one who would never return

UPCOMING BOOT CAMP

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